


so raise your hands up high, and wash us away

by thekaidonovskys



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, mentions of both, pre-Mako/Raleigh, pre-Newt/Hermann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekaidonovskys/pseuds/thekaidonovskys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glasses are raised to the heroes, and sighs of relief are breathed as people finally begin to realise that it truly is over. That they’ve survived. But in surviving, in realizing that your own life is finally safe, it’s so easy to forget those who didn’t. Four people don’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so raise your hands up high, and wash us away

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted by Tumblr user thekaidonovskys.

The second the clock shuts down, the party begins. 

It goes well into the night and secret stashes of alcohol are cracked open from all over the building (and other secret stashes that certain people decide to ignore), leading to a naturally rambunctious and out of control gathering. Tendo manages to quickly get them out of Control and they end up in the mess hall instead, pushing the tables away and going wild. 

Nobody can blame them. It’s been a hell of a war, and it’s over, and they’re the ones who have saved the day. And across the city, across the  _world_ , as the word gets out, people are doing the same. Glasses are raised to the heroes, and sighs of relief are breathed as people finally begin to realise that it truly is over. That they’ve survived.

But in surviving, in realizing that your own life is finally safe, it’s so easy to forget those who didn’t. 

Four people don’t. 

Four people can’t. 

***

**Herc**

His son might have been a bit of a bastard but hell, he was his son. 

Herc makes his way to Chuck’s room, knowing that soon enough he’ll have to go through it, clean it out and box everything up, and the sooner he gets started the easier it’ll be to breathe. He’s been through this before - Chuck was the last remaining family he had apart from his brother and god knows if he’s even still alive - and Herc knows it’s easier to throw it all out now, to not keep so much as a token, because there’s no way to bring them back and there’s no point in holding on.

That said, he hasn’t expected to come across his wife’s diary. 

He stops, midway through stoically boxing his son’s possessions up, and stares. He recognises the book immediately, of course, had found it when he was cleaning out the house before they moved on, before they kept moving and never stopped. He’d considered reading it, but in the end hadn’t even opened the cover. 

Chuck had been eleven years old, and somehow he had snuck the diary out of the box and kept it for ten fucking years without Herc ever knowing. 

And that’s about when Herc finally lets himself cry. 

Because one of the last things that Chuck had said to him was that he knew. He knew everything Herc had wanted to say all these years, and Herc had taken comfort from that at the time, feeling that at least if Chuck didn’t make it back, they had at least tied up all the loose ends. 

But just because Chuck knew all the things Herc wanted to say doesn’t mean Herc knew if there was anything Chuck had left unspoken. 

Except he does know. He knows how Chuck has felt all these years - bitter and angry, angry at  _him_. Because he had no mother, because Herc should have saved her and didn’t. Because Herc might appear to be a hero in the eyes of everybody else, when he’s outside the Jaeger he’s just a failure of a father to his son. 

He’ll never make it right. He’ll never make it up to Chuck, and even though deep in his heart he knows he never would have anyway, not for as long as he lived, it’s now a certainty that he has no chance. 

It’s over. 

His only consolation is that the war is over too, that the Jaegers can finally be decommissioned for good. That nobody will ever ask him to Drift again or get back into one of those machines or have anything to do with another Shatterdome.

Except they will ask. He’s already seen people looking to him to take over from Stacker (and Stacker, he hasn’t even  _begun_ to mourn him yet, that’s for another day), to take charge and figure out what comes next and how to shut the place down and reports and meetings with the UN and press conferences and -

No. He won’t. He  _can’t._

There’s only one thing left for Herc now, and he knows it. Only one way to give himself a purpose that doesn’t tear his heart right down the middle. 

He’s going to leave this godforsaken place in the morning and he’s going to try and find his brother. 

***

**Mako**

She can’t cry for a long time. 

It takes less work than anticipated to get away from Raleigh, but then she remembers that of course, he’s been there with his brother and understands that she’ll need time alone. So she slips away while he covers for her with the people who are still sober enough to want to talk to her, and instead of going to her room she heads up to the office. His office. But not. Not his anymore. 

Out of all the people she thought might die in this war, herself included, she had never considered Stacker as one of them.

And, oh, if only she had. Maybe then she wouldn’t be so numb now, so devoid of any emotion and to think only a few hours ago she had been sitting out in the ocean  _laughing_  - because yes, Raleigh’s alive and all life needs to be celebrated but her second father’s body is now lying in pieces in the bottom of the ocean and how can she be happy, how can she feel anything? 

But somehow the positive emotions are still trying to get through, and at first she feels awful for it, pacing around the huge office  _furious_ with herself for daring to smile when she remembers sitting in here with Stacker, drinking tea and shaking their heads over the latest argument between the two scientists. She almost laughs remembering trying to teach Stacker some of the most complex Japanese words she knows - because he had rudimental skills, enough to hold a conversation, but other than that he spent a lot of time stumbling over syllables in a way that always made her laugh. 

And then she does laugh, and then she stops and realizes that she  _should._

He’s dead now, of course. Dead on the bottom of the ocean, blown up in an effort to save the day, and he _did_ save the day. If he hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have made it through and the breach wouldn’t have closed and the world would currently be getting torn to pieces by Kaiju. But his memory is still here, still with Mako more than ever, and he’s given her so many good times, so much love… in fact, she realizes, the best way to mourn him is to be happy. To be grateful.

And of course as soon as she realizes that, the tears come on in earnest because he’s never going to be there to give her love again. 

She sinks to the floor beside his desk and rests her cheek against the wooden frame and lets the tears fall and replays his last words in her head over and over.

But she doesn’t lose herself in her grief. 

Tomorrow she’ll carry on. Tomorrow she’ll talk to Raleigh and they’ll work out what comes next - because she can’t picture a life without him and she’s seen in the Drift that he feels the same and it might be too soon but who cares, who  _fucking_ cares after everything they’ve been through? If there’s no love, there’s no reason, and they’ve ended this war for a reason. 

They’ve ended the war so they can live. And people have died so they can live, and to let the world fall out from under your feet and refuse to keep going is the ultimate insult to their memory, and tonight Mako will cry but tomorrow she will live her life in tribute of that. 

Because that’s what it’s about. 

It’s about keeping the connection going, never letting the love die no matter who it passes to. It’s about holding hands and staying strong and refusing to fall. 

It’s about taking the love that prompted a Jaeger pilot to rescue the sole survivor and raise her as his own, and giving it back to the world. 

And it’s going to hurt but that’s life too. 

***

**Tendo**

He clears Control for a reason. 

Once the general noise and mess has finally left, the last liftload heading down, Tendo slowly begins walking around, straightening chairs and switching off computers. They’ll still need the mainframe for the next few days, but he knows most of the people who have worked up here for the past months won’t be back. 

That’s okay. It’s over, after all. 

He works his way up to the front of the room, to his own desk. The system is glowing, pulsing gently with vital signs and maps and all manner of things that Tendo hasn’t quite had the time to log or switch off in the past few days. There’s no time like the present and, since he’s not even close to being in the mood to go and get drunk, he sets to work. 

It’s mechanic at first, and he forces it to be as he logs the terminations of  _Gipsy Danger_ and  _Striker Eureka_ and the deaths of Stacker Pentacost and Chuck Hansen, as well as the three Kaiju kills. He confirms the breach closure, confirms a team to head out to the spot where Hermann and Newt Drifted to pick up the gear they left behind, confirms a probe to track the Jaegers at the bottom of the ocean. Then he goes back a step further, logs off  _Cherno Alpha_ and Aleksis and Sasha Kaidonovsky and finally, it’s just  _Crimson Typhoon_ and -

And not finally. Because as the screen lights up with their names, the mechanics of Tendo’s fingers stutters to a halt. The Wei triplets - Cheung, Hu and Jin. And the slowly pulsing message by each of their names:  _do you wish to terminate this pilot?_

No. No he fucking  _doesn’t._

And maybe it’s wrong that he’s been able to log the deaths of all the others without so much as blinking, but maybe it’s also the fact that he knows, throughout the building, others are mourning them tonight. But Tendo knows - or at least suspects - that nobody out there is thinking of the Wei triplets. 

Perhaps nobody else is in the same position to. 

Perhaps Tendo really was the only one who knew them. 

It was the whole triplet thing that closed others off. They already had a bond between the three of them, of the likes that Tendo had never seen before. They’d been perfectly in sync, always together, always one. Most people didn’t even bother to try to tell them apart, and many didn’t know their names at all. They were just the Wei triplets.

But Tendo knew them. 

Cheung was the oldest by nine minutes, a fact that had always filled him with an odd sense of pride and protectiveness. He was the leader, the commander of their trio, and always walked in the middle. And he hated meatloaf night. 

Hu was the typical middle child - nine minutes behind Cheung, three before Jin, and resenting it. Not that there was ever a great deal of resentment between the brothers, he just told Tendo that because Tendo was a middle child and understood. In fact, it had been the firs thing they’d bonded over, the second being how many mugs of coffee it took to wake them up in the morning. 

Jin, the youngest, didn’t speak much. In fact, he didn’t speak at all unless strictly necessary when in public, and it took a lot of coaxing before he would talk freely with Tendo. Tendo had never known why and never asked, but he knew the protectiveness of the other two brothers had something to do with it, and left it unspoken. But he always had a smile for Tendo, who always returned it. 

Cheung loved darts. Tendo had a dartboard in his room. The logical progression meant that once every couple of weeks he would end up with at least one, if not all three, of the men in his room, the others watching if they were present. They invited him to play poker one night, but he had known better than to accept any kind of game where they could use their triplet telepathy against him (which he firmly believed in) and stuck to darts. Sometimes he won, too. 

Hu taught Tendo enough martial arts to defend himself. He didn’t ask why Tendo wanted to defend himself, and Tendo didn’t need to tell him that it wasn’t so much now, but what he could have done when he was younger. He taught him well and with patience, and then kicked his ass when Tendo thought he might know enough to challenge him. But he had done it kindly. 

Jin was the one who had kissed Tendo one night, bashful and blushing when Tendo had looked at him curiously. “I had never tried it,” he had said. “I wanted to.” And Tendo hadn’t argued with it, nor tried for anything further, because he knew the brothers were too connected to one another to bring anybody else in. 

(Cheung and Hu had given him twin stares after returning from their next mission, and Tendo belatedly remembered the Drift. He just shrugged, and then they shrugged and it was never spoken of.)

And that had only been a week ago. 

And Tendo wonders what would have happened if he had pushed. 

Nothing, surely, and he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have wanted it. He’s not sitting on the ground crying right now because he  _loved_ Jin or anything like that - he’s sitting on the ground crying right now because he loved them all in his own way, and each one in their own individual way. He’s sitting on the ground crying because if anybody else actually stops to mourn the Wei triplets, they’ll mourn just that, the _triplets_ , and not each individual man himself. 

So Tendo’s going to do it and he’s going to do it right. He’s going to mourn them because he can’t very well do anything else, can’t move the weight in his heart until he’s cried it out properly and well and  _right_. Because yes, they were pilots and yes, pilots died in this war, many of them and many great men and women, and many of them in the past week alone. But they were also his friends, the three street fighters who had brought their love of fighting into a Jaeger and gave their all with honour and dignity. 

Tendo’s only consolation is that they fell together. They died the way they had lived - as three individuals that made up one body. Inseparable. 

And he’s not Catholic but he still slips the beads off his arm and prays the rosary for the dead three times, but with no pauses between, so it glides into one smooth motion of beads between fingers, blurred by tears.

One prayer, made up of three. A fitting tribute. 

***

**Hermann**

They’d be surprised if they could see him now.

By they, he means the Kaidonovsky’s (and of course thinking that just brings more tears to add to those he’s already shed), but he also means everybody else. Because at least the Kaidonovsky’s would understand his grief, though they’d certainly tell him to stop being ridiculous and of course this had been an eventuality. But they would understand. Nobody else would.

Because nobody else had ever known. 

He was just one of the scientists. Just one of those two strange men who bickered all the time and had no social skills and certainly didn’t draw the attention of Jaeger pilots except to be mocked and that was the way, always the way, they were used to it, they’d gone through high school after all. He’d always been tolerated by Pentacost, spoken to kindly (but rarely) by Mako, and given sharp nods by Herc. Raleigh had been amused by them, Chuck hadn’t acknowledged him once in his life - and if that’s a bad thought to be having about a dead man, then Hermann apologizes but it’s the truth, after all - and the Wei triplets had never come near the lab. 

So when the Kaidonovsky’s had shown up, Hermann had taken one look at them - muscle and power - and decided to stay out of their way. They wouldn’t visit either, he knew that, and they’d get along by not even knowing one another, just like he did with everybody else. 

And he had been so very wrong. 

Newton had been out that afternoon, up working with Tendo on something, so it was just Hermann at his blackboards when the gentle knock came at the door. It was the gentleness that got him, he realised later, because that wasn’t the hand of someone twice his size who could probably crush him in an instant, or at least he clearly hadn’t thought so. Hence nearly falling off his ladder when he turned and saw the massive form of Aleksis in his doorway. “Y-yes?” Hermann had asked, quickly disembarking the ladder. “Can I - help?”

“May I enter?”

“You - yes, certainly. Is there something you need?”

Alexis entered, looking around. “No. Just curiosity. We have seen the Jaeger floor and the Control, but there is much more to Jaegers than that. The numbers, for one.”

He gestured at Hermann’s blackboard and Hermann nodded. “Yes. The coding, and the predicting of the breach.”

“You worked on Cherno Alpha?”

“I did. Not primarily, but the base code is mine.”

“Your codes are excellent.” Alexis stepped over and offered his hand, which engulfed Hermann’s when he shook it. “I am Alexis. You will come for drinks with my wife and I tonight, yes?”

“I - I don’t drink, I’m afraid.”

Alexis smiled. “Nor do we. You will come?”

Hermann had hesitated because - well, no, he had work to do and the idea of being in a closed room with two Kaidonovsky’s reminded him all too much of the class bully luring you into a room so they could all have a go at you, but - “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I will.”

“Good.”

And he had gone, and Sasha was kind, almost too kind, like Hermann’s own mother, fussing over him and his leg and making sure he was comfortable. He had talked about the codes and even some of Newt’s work, and they shared their piloting experiences - but with no boasting about muscle and power, just simple explanation, technical enough that Hermann could appreciate it. 

That had been a Wednesday. And the next Wednesday, Aleksis had shown up at the lab door again, and that evening Hermann had gone to join them again, and again, and every Wednesday henceforth until now.

Except, that wasn’t true. Because on January 8, the Kaidonovsky’s had died. And January 8 had been a Wednesday. 

Hermann hadn’t picked up on it at the time, too frantic with everything else going on and the Drift and the breach and  _yes_ , of course he had recognised their death but he had compartmented away the emotions for a more logical time because that was what a war had taught you to do. 

But now. 

Now he sits here, and it’s a Sunday night and he knows that this Wednesday he won’t be knocking at the Kaidonovsky’s door at 8pm sharp. He won’t have Sasha fussing over him and asking when the last time was he ate or slept properly, giving him the most comfortable chair and making him a cup of tea. He won’t have Aleksis asking about his calculations or how he managed to code a particular piece of machinery in their Jaeger, always so interested in his reply. He won’t be able to ask about their piloting, about their lives, about if they’ve heard from home. He won’t be able to laugh with them over the latest pilot gossip, or tell them about Newt’s latest crazy ideas. 

He won’t have any of it.

He’s had four days to seal his grief away and now it bursts out of him, violent and unrestrained because he’s lost his  _friends._ And because nobody knew, nobody understood how wonderful they could be, because they never tried to let them in. Because everybody else had already formed connections when Aleksis and Sasha had walked around that first day, were polite but distant, and Hermann was the only one who stopped and thought and let himself take a chance. 

Thank god he had, because Aleksis and Sasha had been two of the best people he had ever known. 

They loved each other, not with a burning passion like Hermann saw too much of and detested, but with a steadiness and relentlessness that made Hermann’s own heart ache. They were constant and secure, secure enough to share their minds in a Drift that would have many couples baulking away from the thought - because it’s one thing to be open in a relationship, but  _Drift_ openness takes great courage.

They were the only pilots not bound by blood. And that made them stronger than anybody else seemed to realize. 

And they had opened that connection to Hermann. He had certainly never been a part of their relationship like some would suspect if they had known (and that’s not to say they hadn’t asked, but Hermann hadn’t quite been comfortable with it and his polite refusal had been met easily and accepted), but he had been part of their lives. As husband and wife, they certainly didn’t have to invite anybody in to their lives, and most of the pilots seemed to think they hadn’t, simply because none of  _them_ had been let in. 

But that was because nobody thought to look at the bottom of the food chain. 

And when Hermann had been with them, he  _hadn’t_ been the bottom of the food chain. He had been valued and respected as a person first, and a mathematician second. Pilot status hadn’t mattered to the Kaidonovsky’s, not one bit. In fact, Sasha had admitted that they preferred him, because at least his sense of self-pride came from his mind, not his muscles. The fact that someone preferred  _him_ , Hermann Gottlieb with his bad people skills and bad leg and bad temper, had always been a bit hard to believe, but it had been there.  _They_ had been there.

Now they’re gone. 

But what they’ve done for Hermann isn’t. 

There had been six people in the Shatterdome that had treated Hermann like a person - Pentacost, Mako, Newt, Tendo, Aleksis and Sasha. Three of those people are now dead; but three still remain. Three people for Hermann to reach out to, to offer the connection he’s learned how to have through being wanted by Aleksis and Sasha. 

And one in particular who he wants to draw as close as possible to.

They’d known, too. The last Wednesday they had met, with most of the talk tense as the double incident drew closer and closer, Sasha had walked him to the door as Aleksis washed up. Just before opening it, she had paused and leaned in to murmur to him; “When are you and Newton going to become one?”

“We - we’re not… it’s not like that -“

“Not now, no. When you have courage, it will be. Remember, Hermann, the world might end. In a week, this might all be gone. Love those you can while you can.”

He’s going to take those words to heart. 

He can only love the Kaidonovsky’s in spirit now, but he can take the love they’ve shown him how to give and give it to Newt instead, and maybe that’s going to be enough to help heal the hole in his heart. 

***

The light of day dawns, as it always does. 

Herc and Mako meet the next morning to discuss details - because Herc doesn’t want to stay and Mako gets it, and helps him quietly prepare to disappear. But before they do, Herc sweeps her up in a hug, just like the ones Stacker used to give, and holds her for a long time. He tactfully ignores her red eyes when he lets her go.

Mako finds Tendo standing on one of the bridges overlooking the Jaeger floor, and hands him a mug of coffee. She puts a hand on his shoulder and he covers it with his own, rosary beads clinking gently as he looks at the empty spot where  _Crimson Typhoon_ would never return to dock. 

Tendo’s in Control when Hermann heads up, mid-morning, to get some documents and he sees the look in his eyes. He loads up the screen, loads up the Kaidonovsky profiles, and gives Hermann a moment alone as he busies himself with getting the paperwork Hermann needs. When he turns back, Hermann drops an arm around his shoulders briefly, then leaves. 

Hermann finds Max outside Chuck’s door, wagging his tail. He searches for Herc and finds him in the mess hall, sitting alone and staring at a small leather-bound book. Hermann sits next to him, holding Max’s leash, and stays, in silence, until Herc finally gets up to leave. He takes Max’s leash, then gives Hermann a nod, this time far softer and more understanding. 

They don’t ever talk about it, not with each other. But they understand. 

They grieve in silence and in solitude, but together. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I know things got a bit uneven in there but I'm a major Kaidonovsky stan (in case you couldn't tell by the name) and that was the relationship I wanted to explore the most - also, Tendo and Hermann's sections required more explanation as they weren't relationships actually explored in the film. 
> 
> Title from "Roses for the Dead".


End file.
